


Brevity Codes

by 2ndA



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-13
Updated: 2013-07-13
Packaged: 2017-12-19 08:51:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/881841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2ndA/pseuds/2ndA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In their infinite tactical wisdom, the practitioners of maneuver warfare have succeeded in mobilizing him, literally, right into the ground. Better now?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brevity Codes

**Author's Note:**

> Totally fictitious; epigraph by James Gibsen, writing about Vietnam. Based on the people and events portrayed by Evan Wright, David Simon, and Ed Burns, plus various actors and directors. Additional assistance from wikipedia.

 

   
 _"Societies go to war, not disembodied foreign policies._  
 _After one has found the light at the end of the tunnel, the question becomes,_  
 _what does one see?"_

At the tip of the spear that is the second American invasion of Iraq, Brad Colbert lies on his back between the desert sand and his humvee. In their infinite tactical wisdom, the practitioners of maneuver warfare have succeeded in mobilizing him, literally, right into the ground. Of course, he figures, that’s only fair considering how much of the ground has now adhered itself to the undercarriage of his victor.

There’s a layer of gunk from the sabka they drove through the other day, plus grit and sand from all the roads they’ve traveled since, all glued on with motor oil. It may be the only thing holding the goddamn tin can together.

“We are _not_ leaving this vehicle,” he’d announced as it sunk into the sabka. And then, to placate his men, who were the ones who had to cas-evac it out of that fucking quicksand, he’d expounded: “if we leave this glorious piece of lowest-bid, taxpayer-funded Marine Corps property behind, Corporal Person is going to cry. Like a four-year-old girl. And that’s not something you want to see, gents.”

“I do!” someone had shouted. (Ray had offered that commentator a one-fingered salute).

“Let me rephrase that,” Brad tried again, over the cat-calls and insults. “First, Ray is gonna cry. And then the rest of us are gonna have to fucking _walk_ to Baghdad.”

He’d been joking about Ray’s tears, but not entirely: it’s true that he’s put more money into this wreck than he should have, but Ray’s the one who sometimes slips and refers to the victor as “her” or “she” (“Well, she is a fucking bitch,” the RTO had retorted when Brad called him on it, “takes my money and won’t. Fucking. Put. Out.” He’d punctuated each word with a kick to the sorry-ass bumper. Brad thinks it qualifies as an abusive relationship, but he’s not sure who’s getting screwed over).

Brad smacks his make-shift mallet against the screwdriver he’s using as a chisel. Another goddamn chunk of Haji real estate crumbles off the humvee. He closes his eyes, swings blindly, and feels more of the grit drift down on his face. Sand and clay dust and pulverized rock; he is fucking _breathing_ Iraq.

“Hey, Brad?”

Brad tries not to jump. “What?” he snaps, annoyed with himself. He should’ve fucking heard Ray walking up to the hummer: the guy’s not known for his silence.

His RTO is squatting down, peeking under the vehicle. “If the reporter gets killed, can I have his MOPP suit?”

Ray is fishing for an argument, hoping for an elaborate insult, something along the lines of how he’s a morbid, Charms-eating, fate-tempting, bad-luck-mongering bastard son of a hillbilly whore. All true, but Brad refuses to engage: this is what SERE training was for. “You already have a suit,” he says, mildly.

“Yeah, but his is desert cammo. Mine’s _woodland_.” Brad doesn’t bother to respond, which doesn’t keep Ray from carrying on the conversation, one-sided.

“Look, Brad, if some sand nigger lights me up ‘cause he ain’t never seen a pine tree before? That would kind of suck for my combat effectiveness. On the other hand, if the bad guys shoot the fucking reporter, well… that might be sad for whatever retard liberal motherfuckers read that fucking fish wrap, but— _whatever_ ,” Ray shrugs, confident that the Reporter’s yuppie readership will get over it soon enough. “Besides, Rolling Stone and me, we’re, like, practically the same size.”

Their resident war scribe has a couple of inches in every direction on the driver: Ray's a stringbean. Brad doesn’t bother pointing this out.  He just hammers away at another section of dried gunk, trying not to dislodge anything too vital underneath. Sand nigger, he thinks, bad guy. Haji . A haji is someone who’s made the requisite trip to Mecca—Brad is assured of this: he read the little fact sheet distributed by the State Department in order to win hearts and minds (two photocopied pages on the history, culture, religion, and language of a country twice the size of Idaho). A Haji is, if anything, a good guy. A holy guy.

Ray is quiet for about five seconds—the platoon record is seven—and then, when he realizes his MOPP gambit has failed, he tries another tactic.

“ _Rolling Stone_ ,” he announces, “is a fucking retarded name for a magazine. I mean, _Juggs_ —you know what that’s about from the title. Same with _Hustler_. But _Rolling Stone_? What the fuck does that even mean?”

Brad gives in, as Person knew he would eventually, and sighs. “Ray, I am deeply sorry that your raggedy-ass, whiskey tango hick upbringing in the backwoods of pre-industrialized Appalachia was too culturally impoverished to have extended to basic proverbs, but there’s a thing about a rolling stone ga—”

“Well, I know _that_ ,” Ray manages to sound offended, but only for a moment. “I’m not Walt; I wasn’t raised in a goddamn _barn_. But it’s still a stupid fucking title. I mean, what’s so badass about a rolling stone? Who the fuck likes moss, anyway? I mean, say I go into a store, like, a WalMart or some shit, and I’m standing in the checkout line, I see, like, fucking _Oprah Magazine_ , I know what that is gonna have in it. I know that—”

Brad relaxes the muscles in his neck, letting his head roll until he can see his RTO. Ray has collapsed into a sprawl against the wheels of the hummer, alternately scratching his balls and picking at his filthy fingernails. Trails of brown liquid—could be tobacco juice, could be instant coffee—have leaked from the corners of his mouth, creating a blurry, sad-clown frown. He’s wearing neither his Kevlar nor his flak vest and his sweat-stained t-shirt is, of course, untucked, like Brad has nothing better to do than pass on retarded reminders about the goat-fucked grooming standard. And Ray is _talking_ , always talking, talking not to communicate information, but just to hear the sound of his own fucking voice, like every other motherfucker in this shit of a camp. Brad watches in fascination: Ray’s mouth opening and closing, words coming out, meaningless fucking words. If he took the screwdriver in his hand and drove it into Ray’s fucking face, he wonders if the moron would just _shut up_.

The thought is quick but so startlingly real—he can picture the blood: a red oil slick, like from that haji kid—that for a split second, Brad thinks it actually happened. He takes a deep, shuddering breath, tastes sand and adrenaline at the back of his tongue.

“What?” Ray says, suddenly, and Brad realizes that he’s staring. “What’re you looking at? Do I got something on my face?”

 

 

+++

Brad can tell who his next visitor is even though he can only see a pair of boots at first: about twenty yards away, Ray has just started singing _Cover of the Rolling Stone_. He’s not sure why he’s suddenly so popular. Before Ray, it was Rudy, thinking he looked lonely. Before Rudy, it was goddamn Trombley, with water from H  & S.

Brad closes his eyes in exasperation: he is not lonely.

He is not thirsty.

He is just trying to keep this piece of shit humvee going for another hundred klicks. That’s it. All he wants in the goddamn world.

The reporter drops into the shadow of the vehicle. He lets a long moment of silence stretch out (a trick Ray has never learned) before speaking. “Surrender, Dorothy,” he intones, hollowly.

“I will never surrender of my own free will,” Brad recites. “If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist.” He doesn’t have to take his eyes off the undercarriage to know the Reporter is gaping, “if I am captured, I will continue to resist by all means available.”

“It...it’s from _The Wizard of Oz_ ,” the Reporter stutters in his regular voice, nervously: once again, his civilian joke has failed to translate. “You know, the wicked witch comes along on her broom and she does the sky-writing and…your feet sticking out made me think of…”

“Mine’s from the Armed Forces Code of Conduct,” Brad replies flatly, enjoying Rolling Stone’s discomfort. And then, because winding up the reporter is a rare pleasure he deserves on a day like this one, he adds, “You might be dismayed to hear…Person wants you dead.”

“ _What?!_ ”

Brad lets him hang for a moment, trying frantically to remember something he might have done or said to inadvertently offend Ray Person, before defusing the situation. “He’s got nefarious designs on your MOPP suit.”

“Do you think those are going to be important?” the Reporter asks, after weakly laughing off Person’s scheming. (Brad has to admit, the Reporter may be a pussy civilian leftist, but he bounces back.) “I mean, do you think there really are weapons of mass destruction?”

Brad considers the question for a moment and then, even though he knows Rolling Stone is hoping for a quote, he decides to tell the truth. “I don’t care.”

“You don’t care?!” Sometimes, that fuzzy liberal earnestness is kind of cute. “But…that’s the important—I mean, if there aren’t any WMDs, why are we even here?”

Brad shrugs, feeling the sand under his shoulder blades. “I’m here ‘cause someone made a mistake.”

“A mistake?”

“I’m a deep-water reconnaissance specialist,” Brad’s waves at the sliver of sand and sky visible from under the humvee. “Have _you_ seen any deep water since we got here?”

Comprehension dawns on the Reporter’s face. “You were mis-informed!”

That’s not exactly how Brad would put it, but he’s already tired of the conversation. “Sure, okay.”

“No! It’s like…Have you ever seen _Casablanca_? Somebody asks Rick—that’s Humphrey Bogart’s character—how he ended up in Casablanca. And Rick says, _My health. I came for the waters._ And then the other character says…” the Reporter is now excitedly sketching the whole scene with his hands, “ _What waters? We’re in the desert_! And then Rick says—totally deadpan, Bogart is great— _I was mis-informed_.” Rolling Stone looks delighted by this punchline and Brad wonders if the guy thinks in terms of storylines and good dialogue _all the time_ , if that’s what it means to be a writer. He wonders what movie the Reporter has mentally cast them all in. Probably something suitable for John Wayne.

 

 

+++

Brad has shed the top half of his MOPP suit by the time his final visitor arrives. His only other concession to the heat has been to pull off his boots, which are paired precisely by the front wheel, socks tucked neatly inside. Nate can probably _smell_ those boots from where he’s propped himself against the rear wheel. Brad can certainly smell Nate—sweat and gun lubricant and the too-sweet fragrance of cheap sunscreen that hasn’t done a fucking bit of good. With a sunburn blooming across the bridge of his nose, their fearless leader looks ridiculously young. Brad wonders if the Joint Chiefs know there are goddamn _twelve-year-olds_ commanding platoons in this desert war. Next to Nate, Brad’s feet, pale in the dust, stick out from the victor at a crazy angle that does look a little bit like the wicked witch, trapped under her house. There’s a gash on his left ankle, right above the bone and Brad notices that his toes are wrinkled from three days crammed into sweaty socks.

“What happened?” Nate asks, leaning down so he can see Brad under the victor.

“Well, sir, it’s a long story,” Brad begins after a moment, calling up as much as he can from the State Department fact sheet. “I’m given to understand that after this particular region of the global community passed from a British protectorate to become an independent nation, it was a stronghold for a series of somewhat legitimate warlord-leaders who got themselves embroiled in a lot of territorial disputes. This pissed off the UN security folks and our own illustrious president and so—here we are, spreading the gospel of democracy and making the world safe for liberty and Starbucks.” He pauses for effect. “Also, there may or may not be chemical weapons of mass destruction.”

Nate blinks. His eyes look silver in the shadow of the humvee, even though Brad knows they’re really green. “I meant, what happened _to your ankle_?”

“Oh. Schwacked it when a crate of humrats fell on it back at Mathilda.” Brad’s mouth twists wryly. “Despite the not inconsiderable efforts of the U.S. Marine Corps, Corporal McCall remains a fucking klutz.”

 _Schwacked_ , like _screwby_ , is a key word in Recon-1’s radio vocabulary, a verb that covers all damage from a cut while shaving to a full-on aerial bombardment. Brad’s injury falls on the lesser end of that spectrum. In fact, the cut would’ve healed by now if it had been exposed to open air, but after three days in his boot, it is gummy with pus. Sand is starting to stick, creating a gritty crust.

“You should have Doc look at it.”

“Roger that, sir. I’m sure Doc has nothing better to do.” Brad knows his tone is danger-close to sarcastic, but when Nate twists to look at him, he keeps his face neutral, his eyes fixed on his work.

Nate could make it an order, he’s done it before for men in his command to goddamn stubborn to get a little injury attended to before it becomes a big deal. But he suspects that managing Brad is like anything else in this fucking war—if Nate wants it done, he’ll have to do it himself.

Brad tenses when Nate wraps a hand around his ankle. Touching a recon marine without fair warning is a great way to get yourself hurt. Of course, Brad’s not a touchy-feely guy at the best of times, not like Ray, who will climb you like a jungle-gym, or even Rudy, who is liberal with the backslaps and handshakes. They’ve been crammed five or six to a victor for days, but they’ve also been wearing helmets and flak jackets and twenty pounds of protective gear. Nate is actually the first person to _touch_ him in…well, in a while.

“I’m bandaging you up,” Nate says, like Brad might not have noticed.

“I’m fine, sir.”

“Then you’ll be even better with a goddamn bandaid, Sergeant.” Nate permits just a little annoyance to creep into his voice. If _one more person_ tries to tell him how to do his job….

The shrink-wrapped bandage packets Nate carries in his vest are overkill for a job like this and isn’t that just the fucking way: feast or famine in the good old USMC. He stuffs the extra bandages back into the plastic.  They’re not sterile now. What a fucking waste.

Brad’s skin is sandy, the bandaging tape won’t stick, and by the time Nate’s done, there’s an ungainly wad of startlingly white gauze and tape stuck to Brad’s leg.

“Better now?” Nate demands.

Brad shifts to stare at him, looking vaguely puzzled, the humvee forgotten. Nate’s expression is one Brad is used to seeing on Doc’s face, on the faces of the civilians who bring him their wounded—the angry, panicked look of people who have the responsibility but not the resources. Behind them, Hasser and Ray are butchering _Fortunate Son_ ; fucking Ray has managed to insert a verse that rhymes with Jalalabad. (Earlier, it had been John Lennon's _Beautiful Boy_ : they'd forgotten most of the lyrics, even though there are only, like, twelve different words, including beautiful and boy. The part about life happening while you're making other plans, though? Even Ray remembered that.)

“Better now. One hundred percent, grade A cured, sir.”

“Glad to hear it. When you’re done here, I’d suggest interrupting Corporal Person’s jam session and letting him know you’re not mad at him.”

“What?!”

“He thinks you’re hiding from him,” Nate replies matter-of-factly, and Brad’s not sure how to respond to that. Usually _he’s_ the one who is best at reading Rays’s fucked-up moods.

“I’m not _mad_ at him. I’m sure as hell not _hiding_ from him!”

“Ok,” Nate says, soothingly, and Brad didn’t mean to sound quite so defensive. It’s not like Ray’s interpretation of events is ever rational or anything, it’s just…

“I’m supposed to be in the ocean,” he says, before he can think better of it.

“Yeah? Well,” Nate scrubs a hand through his hair, already starting to grow out, a threat to the grooming standard. “I’m supposed to be in graduate school.”

For some reason, the idea of Nate in a lecture hall cheers Brad up a little. “Rudy says we are where we are meant to be.”

“Rudy,” the LT smiles fondly, “is a fucking Zen fruitcake.”

“Roger that. And Rolling Stone was telling me there’s no place like home,” Brad offers.

“Yeah,” Nate huffs a sigh as he settles his Kevlar back on his head, fastens the chinstrap. He visibly straightens his shoulders, like he’s preparing for a thirty-pound pack. “Of that, I am assured.”


End file.
